A History of Lincoln County Post
Offices
The Postmasters and Historians of Lincoln County.
The National Association of Postmasters of the
United States
The New Mexico Chapter of NAPUS
The Lincoln County Chapter of NAPUS
The Postmasters and Employees of Lincoln County
The Volunteers named herein who contributed to this
history
The Ruidoso Printing Company, Ruidoso New Mexico,
88345
Presented by permission of the Lincoln County
Postmasters and authors.

A History of Lincoln County Post
Offices
Folklore and Tales about People and Postmasters
in early Southeastern New Mexico

This Historical reference Work Was
Issued in
The Golden Anniversary Year of New Mexico's
Statehood--1962.

History of Lincoln County Post
Offices
(This taken from the 1913 Lincoln County, New Mexico
Year Book published at Carrizozo, New Mexico by the
late John A. Haley.)

Lincoln County

Lincoln County was created by an act
of the Territorial Legislature in 1869, and was not,
therefore, one of the original nine counties in the
organization of the territory after it had been
acquired from Mexico. It was one of the first
created, however, after the organization of the
Territory, and at the same time the largest. Soon
after its organization the county seat was
established at Lincoln, then known as the Bonito
Plaza. There the seat of the government remained
until 1909, at which time the county seat was
changed to Carrizozo, where all courts have since
been held and where a new court house and jail have
been completed.
Originally Lincoln County covered all the
southeastern part of the Territory--about on-fifth
of its total area. Three entire counties--Chaves,
Eddy and Roosevelt--have been carved out of its
former territory, and four other counties--Curry,
Guadalupe, Otero and Torrance--contain a portion of
its first area.
Lincoln County now occupies a position a little
south and east of the south center of New Mexico,
and is bounded as follows:

On the north by Torrance and
Guadalupe counties. on the east by Chaves County, on
the south by Chaves and Otero Counties and o the
west by Socorro County.

It has an area of 4,659 square
miles, approximately 3,000,000 acres, of about
1,250,000 acres are subject to homestead entry. A
considerable portion of its area is classed as
mineral land and more than half a million acres lie
in the Lincoln National forest, which covers the
central part of the county--its mountain ranges.
Lands may be homesteaded in the reserve, when shown
to be agricultural, and many settlers now reside
within in its boundaries.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...
Due to the sparsely settled communities in our
county all activities centered around the small post
offices. In order to pass this information on to
future generations, the county organizations of the
New Mexico Chapter of the National Association of
postmasters of the United States, began a program
toward that end.
The first sep was obtaining the authentic records
from the Post Office Department in Washington, D.C.,
on the county offices, names , dates, and
appointments of postmasters. This covered the first
post office in 1873 through 1939. From 1930 to 1962,
when the first book was published the information
was supplied by the personnel in the 16 county
offices then in existence. For this revised copy,
additional records from the National Archives have
been received. These records are from 1931 thorough
1971.
To the people who furnished the folklore and human
interest stories the Lincoln County Postmasters are
deeply grateful.
There may be variations and contradictions in dates
and names due to the differences in recollection in
our gracious contributors but to the best of our
abilities this is historical and legendary in its
entirety.